An Impressive Effort

Hey, there! Remember me? Life has been C.R.A.Z.Y. I have been on the road for work five of the last seven days. I'm tired.

But I didn't come over here to bitch. Promise. I did come to tell you about a few of the days of my travel and the awesome project I got to be a little part of.

You see, there is this little town in southeast Iowa and in this little town is a little school. A little empty school. Two years ago this little town's school consolidated with a little bit bigger of a little town's school to cut costs. Now their school is empty. And it was scheduled to be knocked down. But this town of 185 said no! They wanted a community space and they wanted to reclaim this empty space. They wanted a place where the wee ones could get quality early childhood education, they wanted a place where people who needed help could come and get assistance, they wanted a place where people working to get things in order could have transitional housing, they wanted a place where the youth could play basketball in the summer. They wanted a place to be a community. And they are getting it.

I was invited in as a consultant to work with the community to have conversations using the World Cafe model and do some capacity building work with the community around asking powerful questions. I came to challenge others, but I also got the opportunity to learn and be challenged myself. Which is one of my favorite parts about my job working in communities!

So, not only did we talk.

We also cleaned some doors.

And some bleachers.

And we painted.

(I got in a little trouble for letting the youth paint with their hands!)

And we fixed the roof.

This wasn't all. We also dreamed for the future, talked about the present, made new relationships, learned from each other, and for a weekend we were all together.

Thanks for letting me be a part of this. :)